Welcome to Due Diligence, the FT’s daily deals briefing

Rise in plaintiffs comes as German chemicals group reports 19% jump in sales

Like other accelerators, Techstars, a network of more than 40 corporate and geographically targeted startup bootcamps, has had to bring its marquee demo day events online. Over the last two weeks of April, industry-focused accelerators working with startups building businesses around mobility technologies (broadly) and the future of the home joined programs in Abu Dhabi, […]

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

Under lockdown, communities are finding new ways to voice their defiance, anger and support

Under lockdown, vulnerable families are imprisoned in a cage of terror, stress and abuse

Many zombie companies will fail, no matter how much is sprayed around by the Fed

This week we continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of apps, plus the use of live-streaming apps as fundraising tools and more.

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

A number of popular apps including Spotify, GroupMe, Pinterest and TikTok were fielding user iOS crash reports Wednesday evening, the result of an apparent issues with Facebook’s SDK according to a lengthy GitHub thread on the topic. Downdetector logged tens of thousands of user crash reports on Spotify between 3:30 and 5:30 pm PT, the […]

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners said on Friday it will invest $1.5 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, joining social conglomerate Facebook and Silver Lake that have also made bets on the Indian telecom giant in recent weeks. The planned announcement, which would give the U.S.-headquartered software-focused buyout firm Vista Equity Partners a 2.32% stake in […]

If the populists gain power in France and Italy, the future of the euro will be in their hands

COP25 attempts to confront climate change

UK government spending faces increasing pressures

Yesterday, Samsung announced that the Galaxy Flip Z sold out online. What, precisely, that means, is hard to say, of course, without specific numbers from the company. But it’s probably enough to make the company bullish about its latest wade into the foldable waters, in the wake of last year’s Fold — let’s just say […]

Some big moves in the payments platform space: Ant Financial Group, the owner of China’s Alipay payment platform, has announced it’s taking a minority stake in Swedish payments platform Klarna . Klarna has a strong European presence and a flagship product that lets shoppers buy now and pay later in interest-free installments (typically 14 or […]

Samsung overnight released its earnings guidance for the first quarter of 2020, stating that it expected sales of $45.4 billion and an operating profit of roughly $5.3 billion. The company’s fiscal year is aligned to the standard calendar year, and it will announce official earnings results on April 23. Those numbers are slightly up from […]

In its first-quarter earnings report today, Samsung said it expects the COVID-19 pandemic to continue impacting its business for the rest of the year, cutting into sales for smartphones and TVs, but increasing demand for PCs, servers and memory chips as people continue to work or study from home. Samsung’s results for the first-quarter of […]

Glance, which serves media content, news and casual games on the lock screen of Android -powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today. The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their […]

Paige, the Sloan-Kettering spinout that has been building an artificial intelligence platform to improve cancer pathology and subsequently use those insights to develop better drug therapies, has raised an additional $5 million in funding to continue its work commercialising its platform and expanding its research reach, while also getting FDA clearance to launch in hospitals […]

As coronavirus-hit financial markets continue to flip-flop in the wake of bad news followed by pockets of hope, a startup that aims to introduce ordinary consumers to investing has raised a big round of funding. New York-based Stash, which provides a mobile-first route to managing money through investment — as well as retirement, custodial and […]

Amazon has been one of the biggest names synonymous with how the consumer masses are experiencing life under lockdown: its site lets you buy anything from soup to nuts, from books to baking pans for all your sourdough; and via its streaming services, it gives you many ways to stay entertained. But it can also […]

M&A activity has generally slowed down in the weeks since the novel coronavirus took a grip on the world, but there have been some pockets of activity in the tech industry when the price is right or when the divestment/acquisition just makes sense. The world of messaging brings us the latest development in that theme: SAP, […]

Chief executive criticised over move to offer liability cover following premium increase

Chief executive Jim Hackett signals disruption to carmaker’s plans as losses mount

Investment in company’s new China entity is led by state-owned enterprises

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]

Wunderlist is going away, but fans of the productivity app may find some consolation in founder Christian Reber’s announcement that he is launching a new startup called Superlist. “Superlist will be more than just a todo app, but never as bloated as the project management software you loathe to use,” he tweeted. “Slick, fast, and […]

Profit forecasts ditched as coronavirus disrupts operations

A series of big bankruptcies is unlikely but debt workouts will slow economic recovery

Impact of lockdown weighs on company earnings but stock markets look for optimism

Twitch is doubling down on esports in this new era of social distancing as a number of traditional sporting events have been cancelled. The company this week introduced a new esports directory on its site that will make it easier for viewers to find live matches, information on players, games with active competition leagues, a […]

This week we continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of apps, plus the use of live-streaming apps as fundraising tools and more.

Music streaming service Soundcloud is capitalizing on consumer demand for live entertainment amid the COVID-19 quarantine with the launch of its own slate of originally produced live programming. The company today announced its plans for a new Twitch channel where it will air live chat series and other panel conversations, plus music sets and shows […]

Pinterest is introducing new features that make it easier for those planning recipes, virtual events and other quarantine activities. These include the ability to add a date or notes to a board as well as automated ways to better organize your pins on a given board, with the aid of machine learning technology. The company […]

Google today is launching a new app, Read Along, that aims to help elementary school students practice their reading skills and stay educationally engaged amid school closures due to coronavirus. The new Android app is based on Google’s existing application, Bolo, which launched in India last year with a catalog of read-along stories in both […]

A rebranded and expanded version of the CBS All Access streaming service will arrive this summer, ViacomCBS announced this morning. The service, now run by ViacomCBS following the merger, today offers a mix of live TV, on-demand video, original programming, streaming news, local broadcast stations and sports. Now the company is accelerating its plan to […]

When currency traders are nervous, they don’t head for the hills, but for the mountains

I am a US citizen who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years

I am pursuing a claim for the exposure to asbestos while working

I am approaching retirement age with very little pension to live on

Apple’s earnings show the impact of COVID-19, NVIDIA’s top scientist shares an open source ventilator design and Amazon anticipates big spending in the coming months. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 1, 2020. 1. iPhone sales are down, ahead of uncertain times for the industry Apple device sales have taken a hit, but the company’s […]

This week we continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of apps, plus the use of live-streaming apps as fundraising tools and more.

Following in the footsteps of the MacBook Air and 16-inch Pro, Apple’s 13-inch Pro model is finally getting the company’s much improved keyboard. It’s probably not enough reason for recent MacBook buyers to upgrade, but could well be the thing that pushes the indecisive over the edge. To sweeten the pot, the new laptop gets […]

Apple announces a new MacBook Pro, tech stocks take a dip and Uber Eats shuts down in seven markets. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 4, 2020. 1. The 13-inch MacBook Pro gets Apple’s much-improved keyboard Following in the footsteps of the MacBook Air and 16-inch Pro, Apple’s 13-inch Pro model is finally getting the […]

The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) […]

With the new MacBook, Apple closes one of the more unfortunate product chapters in its history. The upgraded 13-inch mercifully marks the end of the failed five-year experiment that was the butterfly switch. I won’t go into too much detail here. If you’ve purchased a MacBook in the past several years, you almost certainly know […]

The Conservatives will not lightly give up their newly acquired working-class voters

Health secretary pledges to increase tests to 100,000 a day in England by enlisting big companies and private labs

At its annual Universe conference today, Microsoft -owned GitHub announced a couple of new products, as well as the general availability of a number of tools that developers have been able to test for the last few months. The two announcements that developers will likely be most interested in are the launch of GitHub’s first […]